THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602180067
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Music review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, THEATER CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
The child-woman with the baby voice that soars like a diva interrupted a song, momentarily, to purr, in best Mae West style, ``I hope you have your snow tires on.'' The rapidly thawing audience roared its approval.
Indeed, the show inside Chrysler Hall was hot enough to melt the snow outside. An opening night afflicted by understandable no-shows was turned into an intimate triumph. Bernadette Peters, the certifiable Broadway baby, trotted out a group of songs that were as unpredictable and as sophisticated as they were crowd-pleasing. Who else sings ``Glow Worm'' these days? Who else captures the sheer drama of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics with this much tense emotion?
Yes, there were the standards - ``My Romance'' from Rodgers and Hart, ``The Way You Look Tonight'' from Jerome Kern, ``Stormy Weather'' from Harold Arlen. But there were also the unexpected dramas, and a few heart-wrenching dramas, such as the expertly articulated ``Faithless Love.'' Peters is very much a song stylist, not just a singer - and she'll try anything.
Peters, during one divergence, played the piano in a way that would have been the envy of even Rachmaninoff (or even Michelle Pfeiffer in ``The Fabulous Baker Boys''). In this case, she never touched the keys. Flaunting a flesh-toned Bob Mackie gown, she, in best torch-singer style, lounged atop the piano as she cooed Sondheim's Oscar-winning song ``Sooner or Later'' from ``Dick Tracy.'' In recognition of the fact that it was sung in the movie by Madonna, she pointed out, simply, that ``we both have religious names.''
An actress at heart, she spun out little stories about a singer named Pearl, who wanted to be Betty Grable, or gave new poignancy to Hank Williams' ``I'm so Lonesome I Could Cry.''
The orchestra, in this case, was very much in the background - not required to provide its customary half of the program. Peters did the entire evening herself and did it with a remarkable lack of the usual gimmicks. She sang, pure and simply. Although there were noticeable vocal problems that suggested a hoarseness or a cold of some variation, this veteran (on the stage since age 14) made no whiny announcements. She merely overcame it.
Marvin Laird, her able pianist and conductor, is the same man who wrote the hilarious Off-Broadway play ``Ruthless'' (a kind of comedic version of ``The Bad Seed'').
In her Arlen medley, she even dared to tread where few singers dare - into the Judy Garland territory of ``Over the Rainbow,'' ``The Man that Got Away,'' and ``Get Happy.'' Making them her own, she makes any comparison inappropriate. Peters has a stage vulnerability that is audience-embracing, but it is not the Garland kind of vulnerability. There is never any doubt that she will hit the high note - or that she will, at the least, effectively hide the fact she didn't hit it.
In an entertainment world in which movie musicals no longer exist and Broadway has largely sold out to London miserables, Peters is forced to carry the mantle of the ``girl singer'' almost single-handedly.
Flinging her kinky-curly mane of hair about, she has a vocal quality near recklessness, but there is that child-woman quality that makes you want to give her a little hug and urge her onward. She is very much the steel magnolia.
On the same stage once occupied by the brassy Ethel Merman and the local box-office diva Mitzi Gaynor, she has become, in the course of this icy weekend, a very worthy addition to Chrysler Hall's most memorable pop evenings. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
An actress at heart, Bernadette Peters gave a soaring performance of
song and style.
by CNB